Friday Roundup April 15, 2016

Welcome to Friday’s Weekly Roundup, my collection of the week’s best posts. I hope you enjoy this week’s collection.

How to Use MailChimp and Bookfunnel to Grow Your Author Mailing List by Aimee Coveney via Alliance of Independent Authors: While you may not have the intention of sending newsletters on a weekly or even monthly basis, when you have a new book available, what easier way is there to share the news with your existing audience? It’s therefore well worth going to the trouble of attracting new subscribers to your mailing list. Note: This post explains how you can use Bookfunnel to get your lead magnets (giveaway books) into the hands of your readers so you can grow your email list.

Facebook Instant Articles: What They Are, How They Work and 5 Things You Need to Know by Buffer: The announcement that Instant Articles were being opened up to all publishers came in February 2016, and they were officially opened for all on April 12, at Facebook’s F8 conference. A Facebook-native publishing platform has been rumored since the social network changed its News Feed algorithm to favor “quality content” in 2013. Since that update, Facebook has become one of the top referrers of traffic to news sites and blogs of all sizes, and in the summer of 2015, traffic analytics company Parsely revealed that Facebook had even overtaken Google as the number 1 referrer of traffic to news sites. Note: Instant articles will be huge on Facebook. Similar to LinkedIn’s publishing platform, I think authors can use this new feature to deliver stories as well as blog posts to their readers. At the very least, this will be a fun new addition for writers.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Facebook has even overtaken Google as the number 1 referrer of traffic to news sites” quote=”Facebook has even overtaken Google as the number 1 referrer of traffic to news sites”]

Why authors need to separate personal social media from business social media by Chris Syme: A recent Author Guild report in Publisher’s Weekly noted that 56% of authors who responded to the extensive 2015 survey made less than $11,670 (U.S. poverty level) in the last year. Part-time writers have seen a median income drop of 37% since 2009. The proliferation of ebooks has not created a proliferation of income. What’s an author to do? Note: Chris does an excellent job of tackling the author’s public brand.

Mastering Metadata: the Key to Marketing Your Books via BookWorks via BookWorks and by Carla King: Metadata is your best friend and marketing partner, so craft it carefully! When you’re ready to upload your book for publication you’ll need to provide a few types of metadata in your Bowker ISBN record and for the various print and eBook distributors. Note: This is a post every indie author should read. If you don’t understand metadata, you will after reading this post. Carla King breaks it down and shows you how to prepare for your next book launch.

My Guest Posts From This Past Week:

From Joel Friedlander’s blog, The Book Designer Blog: Instagram Primer for Indie Authors: According to a report by Digital Marketing Research, as of March 2016, Instagram had 400 million monthly active users and captured the attention of 20% of all Internet users.

From Joanna Penn’s blog, The Creative Penn: Attract And Engage Readers With Image Marketing: A number of years ago, experts predicted that by 2014, mobile marketing would rule the Internet. Guess what? They were right. So what’s the next trend? It’s already here, and it’s visual marketing. In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that Instagram was the fourth most used social media network behind Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. That’s right Pinterest, another visually-based social media network.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Instagram is the fourth most used social media network @CaballoFrances” quote=”Instagram is the fourth most used social media network “]

Our storytelling ability, a uniquely human trait, has been with us nearly as long as we’ve been able to speak. Whether it evolved for a particular purpose or was simply an outgrowth of our explosion in cognitive development, story is an inextricable part of our DNA. Across time and across cultures, stories have proved their worth not just as works of art or entertaining asides, but as agents of personal transformation.

About the Author: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference and a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com. She’s written several books including Social Media Just for Writers, Avoid Social Media Time Suck, and Twitter Just for Writers, which is available for free here on her website. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writer conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online?Ask Frances to prepare a social media audit for you.